Wednesday
8 March 2006 at 14:56 UTC, i.e. 15:56
local time, the EVANGELISCHES GYMNASIUM LIPPSTADT in Lippstadt, Germany established a radio contact with US astronaut William McArthur, KC5ACR,
on board the International Space Station.

The Evangelisches
Gymnasium Lippstadt is a grammar school belonging to
the Protestant Church of Westfalia. At present about
900 pupils aged 10 to 19 attend our school. The school has set itself the
ambitious aim to integrate the vast part of the necessary preparations for the ISS contact into its school curriculum. The preparation
will be part of the school lessons. In addition to working with the ISS education kit, many questions arousing from the
theoretical field of amateur radio technology (technical knowledge) were well
combined with compulsory topics of an extensive physics course. The youngsters´
goal is to obtain an amateur radio operator’s license.

Ralf Karrasch, DF4DC, the radio contact coordinator for this ISS contact and the teacher Daniel Ahrens, DO7DAN, supported the participating kids in a fantastic way
in their preparation for the amateur radio license exam. The goal was perfectly
achieved because they have all recently passed the exam and now they are
waiting for their own amateur radio operator’s license from the authority.
Congratulation to the new members of our worldwide radio ham family!

The technical team of different local
amateur radio clubs set up a satellite station with automatic antenna tracking
as well as a secondary backup station with a vertical antenna on the roof of
the school.

The school shack was located in the huge
assembly hall where the audience of 400 listeners such as students, parents and
teachers could follow the contact.

At 14:56:30 UTC contact with NA1SS was
established. Astronaut William McArthur answered 21 questions on various
topics. The astronaut replied for example that “right now the Space Station
produced about 18kW of power. When it is complete, it
will produce 110kW”.

The signal was all the time absolutely
clear and loud. The circular polarization of the downlink signal changed from
left-hand side to right-hand side and vice versa several times during the
contact. Then, during the answer of the 21st question, the ISS
went over the horizon and its signal went slowly down.

The TV channel WestdeutscherRundfunkWDR, the newspaper
"Der Patriot" (first appearance in 1848)
and the two radio channels Hellweg-Radio and WDR 1 Live covered the event.